In March 2020, student curator Marley Oakes and Special Collections & Archives staff, including Sam(antha) Meier and Cindy Summers, began conducting oral history interviews with individuals who played pivotal roles in the Flagstaff 2020 community visioning process. This oral history project provides a much-desired “update” on the community vision. It enables current Flagstaff residents to gain a better perspective on Flagstaff 2020 by hearing directly from those who were involved in it.
Captioned clips from these oral histories have been utilized throughout Flagstaff 2020: A Clear Vision for context, and to provide personal insights into the Flagstaff 2020 process.
The oral history interviews conducted by Oakes and SCA staff complement the textual materials, photographs, and video recordings documenting Flagstaff 2020 donated to SCA by Kathy Turner in 1997. They have been added to the Flagstaff 2020 Records as the Oral history project subgroup (NAU.OH.2020.11) and made available online through the Colorado Plateau Digital Collections with support from Jess Vogelsang. Several have been transcribed in their entirety by Rebecca Harner or partially transcribed using Otter.ai, a voice-to-text transcription software integrated with Zoom, and checked by Marley Oakes and Cindy Summers.
Time, resources, and the constraints imposed by NAU’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic prevent the department from interviewing everyone involved in Flagstaff 2020. However, Special Collections & Archives hopes to continue to add new voices and viewpoints on Flagstaff 2020 to its collections. To learn more, please visit Share Your Story.